


Epiphyllum

by FarawayVision



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, OMARI au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29153085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FarawayVision/pseuds/FarawayVision
Summary: Epiphyllum oxypetalum: a plant that blooms rarely, and only at night; its flowers wilt before the sun rises.Or: Five years of blooming epiphyllums and four years of sorrow.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 147





	Epiphyllum

**Author's Note:**

> (Alternate description of this work: "What happens when you listen to [Connexion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAW8b5valv4) from GFL for several hours straight while contemplating Basil".)
> 
> Hi! This is my first time writing in... who knows how many years, and I definitely wrote a good chunk of this while sleep-deprived (it's 6AM now send help), but I hope you enjoy!

_< Year 0 >_

It was a nice, bright Saturday morning, and the cartoons were due to come on any second now. Sunny hurriedly, but carefully, poured himself a glass of juice in the kitchen. He could hear Kel and Aubrey fighting for their spots on the couch, over in the living room.

“Hey, _Kel_ , could you scoot over a bit? You’re taking up way too much space!”

“No I’m not, _Aubrey_! You’re the one taking up too much space!”

Juice in hand, Sunny peeked out into the living room. Off to one side of the couch, Kel and Aubrey were shoving and shouldering each other, each trying to claim their rightful share of couch-space. On the other side, Hero’s attention was split between them and Mari, who was somehow dozing off though the racket, her head resting lightly on his shoulder.

Sunny frowned. The couch was probably way too turbulent for his glass of juice; he’d have to take the floor again. Oh well.

Though, now that he was looking, wasn’t someone missing…?

“...Where’s Basil?”

Hero gave a half-shrug with his unoccupied shoulder. Before he could say anything, though, the doorbell rang.  
As expected, it was Basil. His hair was somewhat messier than usual, however, and Sunny noticed definite bags under his light-blue eyes. Despite that, though, his face carried a bright smile, and the photo album in his hands shook lightly with excitement.

“Ah… Hi, Sunny. Sorry for being late. I kind of overslept a bit, haha... ”

Sunny blinked, and tilted his head slightly as he let Basil in. 

“...Something wrong?” he asked.

“No, nothing’s wrong! I’ve just been staying up really late for the past few days...” explained Basil.  
“I’ve been waiting for one of my flowers to bloom,” he continued, and gestured to his photo album. “And last night, it finally happened! I have a picture in my album.”

As Sunny and Basil sat down in front of the couch, Kel piped up from over their heads.  
“Eh? What kind of flower makes you stay up all night just to watch it bloom?”

Basil flipped through his photo album, quickly alighting on one particular photo.  
It showed a large flower in a windowsill, its pure white petals extended as if to reflect the moon shining fully in the background.

Everyone marveled over the picture, TV forgotten for the moment.

“Pretty...” whispered Sunny, eyes wide.

“Wow… that’s such a nice photo, Basil! What kind of flower is that? It looks so beautiful!” chirped Mari.

Basil smiled.

“This kind of flower is called an epiphyllum, or specifically _epiphyllum oxypetalum_.  
“What makes this flower really special, is that it only blooms for one night. In fact, by the time the sun came up this morning, this flower had already wilted!  
“I’ve missed a lot of sleep over the past few days, because I really didn’t want to miss my chance to watch it bloom…  
“But it was definitely worth it, for this picture!” he laughed.

“It must have been even more beautiful in person...” commented Hero.

Aubrey agreed from her place on the couch, teetering perilously over the edge to get a better look at the photo.  
“Yeah! I’m a bit jealous, Basil! You should’ve told us! We could’ve had a sleepover!”

“Oh… I wasn’t really sure exactly when it would bloom, and I didn’t want to make you all stay up with me… but maybe this time next year, when it blooms again, we can all stay over at my house and wait for it together?”

Sunny nodded, and leaned into Basil’s shoulder slightly.  
“Sounds nice.”

Mari laughed. “Well, if _Sunny_ likes it enough to speak up… we should definitely do it!”

“Really, Mari? I can understand one night...” interjected Hero. “...but it sounds like we would need to wait several nights to catch the right time.”

“Well, as Basil said, it only blooms for one night… isn’t that special enough? Right?” she replied, sending a soft smile his way for good measure.

“A-Ah, uhm. I guess so… ahaha...”

And with that out of the way, Kel kicked off the planning.  
“Ooh, ooh! If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need lots of snacks! How much Orange Joe do you think they’ll let us buy at OtherMart?”

“Eww, Kel, you’re the only one who drinks that stuff… but I guess you’re right, we are going to need snacks… hmm...”

\---

_< Year 1 >_

Reality, of course, had other plans.

The next time the epiphyllum bloomed was a cloudy Wednesday night. It caught Basil’s eye as he curled up on his bed, quivering in the 2 AM darkness, unable to sleep. He hadn’t slept well at all since _the incident_.

It’d started innocently. It was the night of the recital, and Sunny had been practicing his piece on the violin upstairs. He’d been up there for hours, trying to get it perfect, and Basil was downstairs, making a small snack so that Sunny didn’t pass out on stage.

On his way back, however, he’d heard raised voices.

“Sunny! Get back here!”

As he neared the base of the steps, however, he saw a brown blur fly down and crash at his feet; scrambling backwards quickly, he saw that it was Sunny’s violin.

Further up, he heard Mari yelling.  
“W- _Why would you do that, Sunny?_ We have a recital in only a few hours! Do you know what you’ve done?”

“...not good enough...”

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?!”

Mari took a step forward, and in response, Sunny took one backwards, towards the steps.  
“Well?!”

“...”

Another step forwards, another step backwards.

“What do you have to say for yourself?!”

“...”

Mari took another step forward. Sunny tried to step backward, but found he had no room, so he turned instead to go downstairs…  
“Hey! Don’t just walk away from me, I’m not done talking to you...”

Mari reached out to grab him, to stop him... and as she did, Sunny lost his balance on the first step down…

What happened after that, Basil only remembers as fragments of memories, like photographs: the two of them going down the stairs together in a tangle of limbs and bodies. The two of them hitting the ground with a _crunch_. A stunned Mari somehow landing on top of Sunny. 

Basil remembered the silence, the disbelief that kept him rooted to the spot.  
_Sunny was okay, right?_

Mari shook her brother, called his name, took him into her arms.  
_It would be fine, right? He just needed to rest a bit, but he’d wake up…he was just asleep...  
_

Basil slowly came unglued, and moved to Sunny’s side, opposite Mari.

He took Sunny’s hand, clasping it in both of his, clutching it like a lifeline.  
It was cold.

He looked down, and some distant part of his mind noted that Sunny's hand looked a bit like a flower.

\---

They had to pry both of them off of Sunny, in the end.

The funeral came and went. They’d told everyone that it was a freak accident. That Sunny and Mari both tripped going down the stairs.

And, of course, Basil had to play along.  
_Please, honey. You need to do this… for Mari’s sake. For your friends’ sake,_ they’d asked.

Not that he really minded… after all, it wasn’t as if _Mari_ could do something like that _on purpose_ , right? Maybe someone else would, but this was _Mari_. Basil trusted her almost as much as he trusted Sunny. 

Yet, a fraction of him felt uneasy about this. Didn’t they deserve to know? Why did she get to walk away without consequences, when she took Sunny away from them?

But for now, he kept his silence, and at the same time, he kept his distance from Mari.

\---

Basil stared at the epiphyllum as he shivered in the cold night air.  
All he could think about is how much it reminded him of Sunny’s hand that day, with five off-white fingers splayed out in a mockery of the epiphyllum’s petals.

\---

_< Year 2 >_

The seasons changed, the epiphyllum bloomed once more, and Basil’s world kept unravelling around him.

He reflected upon his friends.

It had started with Kel.  
He’d bounced back _relatively_ quickly, throwing himself into sports after only a few months of grief. Not that Basil could blame him. After all, Kel was like a cactus: sturdy, resilient… and also a bit of a prick. He could forget, and live as if nothing had ever even happened.   
Not that Basil could. Eventually, he found himself talking to Kel a bit less everyday, until eventually there was nothing there anymore.

Next was Hero.  
He’d thrown himself into studying, cram school, everything he could find. He was set on becoming a doctor now, driven by the belief that he could have done something, anything, if only he’d known _how_ …   
Basil thought it was admirable, but tried not to think about it too much. Every time he did, his thoughts always stuck on one point: _Hero thought it was an accident.  
_Basil wondered how Hero was doing. His busy schedule left very little time for them to talk after _the incident_ , and now that he’d graduated earlier this year, there was nothing there anymore.

And then there was Aubrey.  
At first, she had tried keeping everyone together, tried to keep their ties from fraying into nothing.  
_It’s what Sunny would’ve wanted_ , she said, as if she could have possibly known Sunny’s last wishes. But Basil didn’t fault her; they, her friends, were all she had, after all.

She tried roping them into doing things like they had used to do, before _the incident_ , but it was never quite the same. The atmosphere was different, missing critical pieces. Eventually, they started dropping out one-by-one.  
Kel had sports practices and competitions. Hero had cram school and college. And even Basil had to tend to his flowers.

They still encountered each other every now and then, and every time Basil saw her, he was reminded of a ghost. All the same though, there was nothing there anymore.

Finally, there was Mari _.  
_Soon after the funeral, she had stopped going to school. For that matter, she’d stopped going _outside_ at all, remaining hidden within her own little bubble indoors. Kel, Hero, and Aubrey had all tried asking, coaxing, and even begging her to go outside, in their own ways, but they’d all failed. Even after that, they’d continued trying to reach out to her: Kel and Aubrey would sit in the hallway, talking to a closed door for hours, while Hero prepared little meals that he’d slip underneath her door.

Basil would join them every now and again, but he always felt uncomfortable there.  
Some small, traitorous part of his mind would always begin to rage and scream within him: _stop running from what you’ve done_ , _come out and face the consequences, stop leaving me to keep this secret from my friends._ It wondered how Mari could deserve any of their support when she was the one who _murdered_ Sunny.

Still, Basil tried to shut that part of his brain out. He didn’t _want_ to think of his friend, of _Mari_ , that way. She was still Sunny’s sister. Besides, if he started lashing out now, it would just hurt their other friends even more.  
And it’s not like anyone would believe his side of the story, anyways.

Basil pushed these thoughts out of his head as he stared at the epiphyllum, soaking in what little moonlight shone through the clouded skies. Now, it just sounded like he was making up excuses for her.

\---

_< Year 3 >_

Nothing much had changed by the fourth time the epiphyllum bloomed, but that was mostly because Basil’s life couldn’t unravel much further than before.

Kel was still a dumbass who did sports.  
Hero was still at college.  
Aubrey, at least, had mostly given up on trying to bring them together. If Basil had to guess, it probably had something to do with her parents’ marriage falling apart.  
Mari was still running away from the truth, shutting herself away from the world.

Basil, too, had managed to finally fall into some semblance of a stable life again: Wake up. Check the plants. Go to school. Come home. Check the plants again. Go to sleep. Occasionally fill the gaps in-between with other things.

Unbelievably, he’d even started hanging out with _new_ people sometime in the past year.

Everyone else in town called them ‘hooligans’, but in truth, Basil didn’t really think they were that bad. In any case, swinging around that shovel they nicked from Fix-It proved to be pretty cathartic, even if he never actually _hit_ anyone with it. And at least he convinced them to not pick on Aubrey too much-- she has enough shit going on, right?

Still, that was it. Hooligans for friends, an intimidating shovel, and a Sunny-shaped hole in his life. Not much to write home about.

He looked to the plant on the sill, the epiphyllum’s petals opened fully to nothing but pitch-black skies above, and wished that Sunny was there to see it bloom.

\---

_< Year 4 >_

The epiphyllum was due to bloom for a fifth time, any night now.  
And for Basil, it could not have come at a worse time.

From what Basil knew, Sunny’s mom finally decided to move out of their house, and three days before the move, Aubrey decided to try getting Mari to come out one last time. Unbelievably, after four years, it actually _worked_ this time, and Aubrey had started dragging Mari all over Faraway Town. She’d even managed to string along Kel and Hero too.

Basil saw the four of them around town, patching things together, having sappy group hugs and revisiting old memories…

_(and as he did, he felt an awful, creeping jealousy rising up within him.)_

_(why were they there for her, the_ murderer _, and not for him?)_

It didn’t take a genius to see that they’d try to drag him in next. It’d be just like old times, right? Just the ~~six~~ five of them, hanging out and being friends again, like the past four years never happened.  
_Hah._ _As if_.

_(why didn’t they see how much pain he was in?)_

As far as Basil was concerned, there was still one elephant in the room that hadn’t been addressed. He needed his friends to know _the truth_ . They _deserved_ to know the truth.

_(in truth, he didn’t know what he was trying to do anymore)_

If nothing else… as far as he was concerned, it was his responsibility to _Sunny_.

_(the more he pushed it down, the further back up it came)_

He took a deep breath, and steeled himself. They’d probably try coming over tonight. He’d confront Mari then, get her to admit everything.  
And then… and then he’d be free. Either that, or he’d rip them all apart again, and he’d go straight to hell.

Either way sat fine with him.

A distant part of his mind hoped the epiphyllum would bloom tonight.

\---

Basil’s door rang later that evening. He looked through the door’s peephole.

As he’d expected, Kel, Aubrey, and Hero were standing on his doorstep. Mari stood behind them, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Basil felt his stomach twist.  
_Now or never…_

He opened the door.  
“...Hi. What do you want?”

Aubrey marched up to him and flicked his forehead. It stung.  
“Don’t give us that. You know what we’re here for: to bring everyone back together! Why have you been ignoring us, huh?”

“Yeah!” continued Kel. “I know you’ve seen us together. Why didn’t you join us?”

Basil looked at the sky behind them, rapidly growing darker as the sun set.  
“...Before we continue, do you want to come in? I don’t think we want to have this conversation standing on my doorstep.”

The four friends stepped inside, moving from standing awkwardly on Basil’s doorstep to standing awkwardly in his living room.

“Wow,” started Kel. “It feels like it’s been forever since I last came over… but it hasn’t really changed, huh?”

His eyes eventually landed on a dusty old photo album, left lying on a table. He glanced between it and Basil.  
“Wait, is that… your old photo album?”

“...Yeah. After… well, after everything happened, I kind of stopped taking photos. I guess I didn’t really feel like there was anything worth photographing.”

Suddenly, a quiet voice spoke up. Basil almost didn’t recognize it.  
“D-Do you mind if… we look at it, Basil?” asked Mari.

The voice was soft and tremulous, and felt almost alien coming from Mari.  
It felt… _shattered_.  
From the way Hero winced as he heard it, Basil guessed he wasn’t alone in that sentiment.

Some of the vitriol Basil kept within him vanished.  
“Uh… sure. Go ahead.” he replied.

Basil and Mari set the photo album on the floor, and the others crowded around them as they all looked through the photo album. 

A bit more of the vitriol within Basil vanished, replaced with melancholy.  
_When was the last time I looked at these…?_

Aubrey broke the silence after they’d looked through a few pages.  
“Man… we really had fun back then, didn’t we? It kinda feels like a dream...”

Mari said nothing, but Basil noticed that her eyes lingered on Sunny in every photo he was in.

Eventually, they reached the final photo in the album: a picture of a beautiful white flower, shrouded in moonlight.  
An epiphyllum.

“Oh, this… wasn’t this the flower that only blooms for one night?” asked Hero. Basil nodded.

Unexpectedly, Mari spoke up. “I remember… S-Sunny really liked that flower. He’d draw it often, in his sketchbook.  
“I think he was really looking forward to being able to see it in person...”

Basil looked to her.  
“...You know, I still have this flower in my room. Follow me.”

And with that, he led the four others up to his room, where, in the back, resting on the windowsill, an epiphyllum curled upwards in full bloom, amid the radiant moonlight.

Wordlessly, Mari walked towards it, Basil following one step behind her.  
She crouched down, gazing into the flower’s petals for a minute before falling to her knees and sobbing.

“...why am _I_ the one to see this? _Sunny_ deserves to be the one here, not… not me...”

Basil kneeled beside her, and Mari instantly latched onto him, crying into his shirt.  
“I don’t deserve to live… I--I’m an awful, horrible, failure of an older sister, of a friend…”

Aubrey tried to speak up. “H-Hey! Don’t say that about yourself, what happened to Sunny was an acci--.”

“But it _wasn’t!_ I-- I failed Sunny, I failed _Basil_ … y-you were like another little brother to me, Basil, and I _took Sunny away from you_ \--”

Basil continued to hold Mari, as the others watched in stunned silence.  
“...you know, for the past four years, I held a bit of a grudge towards you,” he started.

Mari flinched slightly, but Basil kept his grip steady.

“It felt like… like everyone was flocking towards you and supporting you, leaving me all on my own. It didn’t feel fair… but still, you loved him more than any of us, I’m sure. I think that... whatever anger I have is probably nothing, compared to what you feel towards yourself.  
“And… you’re still Mari, right? I don’t think I could ever truly hate you.”

And with that, Mari began to sob again, and this time Basil followed suit.  
Soon, however, they both felt Kel, Aubrey, and Hero surround them in a group hug, and they both let the pain and sorrow of the past four years flow through them both.

\---

And eventually, after things had calmed down enough for an explanation...

"I have to tell you something."

\---

_< Year 5 >_

Basil’s door rang, one Friday night.

“Ah, just one second…!” he shouted, carefully lifting a potted plant with both hands.

He made his way down and carefully opened the front door, and was greeted by a familiar face.

“Hey, Basil! So, you think tonight’s the night?” asked Kel.

Basil motioned to the potted plant at his feet.  
“Ah, yes… I have it ready to go, here.”

“Great, let’s go! Do you need any help carrying it?”

“I-I can carry it on my own… thank you, though.”

The moon and stars were out tonight, and the relative isolation of Faraway Town meant that there was little noise other than the sound of crickets chirping in the night air. The two boys walked in a comfortable silence as they made their way to the graveyard.

They were met there by three other familiar faces.

“Basil! You made it! I was worried that Kel was going to accidentally trip you or something.”

“Hey, what do you mean by that, Aubrey?!”

Basil looked away from Kel and Aubrey as they launched into another argument, and looked towards the two others present. He nodded as a hello.  
“Hi Hero, hi Mari.”

Mari smiled, and looked at the flower.  
“Is that it? Wow, it really does look like it’s ready to bloom...”

Basil set the potted epiphyllum down on top of Sunny’s grave.  
“Yeah… I’m pretty sure it’ll bloom tonight, but it might take another hour or so.”

“Well, we’re in no rush,” said Hero. “We should enjoy it while it lasts. After all, this only happens one night every year, right?”

Basil made sure the flower was set up just right, to catch the moonlight when it bloomed.  
He closed his eyes.

_Sunny… wherever you are, I hope you can see this tonight.  
I know you’ve always wanted to see one of these flowers. _

He heard the wind whistle around him.

It sounded a bit like a whispered _‘thank you’_.


End file.
